An Indian federal minister said social networks have to be more responsive and responsible, even if they have their headquarters abroad, after some content on these networks was said to have stoked fears of communal violence in India.
While ruling out shutting down social networks, Sachin Pilot, the country's minister of state for communications and IT, told the TV channel IBNLive late Monday that social networks had not been very cooperative when asked to block inflammatory content, and warned them about the laws of the country.
The social network platforms also had not cooperated with the government's request to provide the registration details and access logs of the people who uploaded such content, the government said separately in a statement through the Press Information Bureau.
"An intermediary social networking site has responded that the up-loaders of the inflammatory and hateful content are outside the jurisdiction of the country, thereby implying that they are not obliged to take any constructive step to deal with it," the government said.
The Indian government did not name any social networks in particular, but the reference to international headquarters suggests it was referring to services run by companies such as Google and Facebook.
India is trying to establish that the people uploading the content were in Pakistan and intent on creating communal trouble in India. The two countries have a longstanding dispute over Kashmir.
Thousands of people from the Northeast fled cities like Bangalore to go back home after warnings online and through SMS (short message service) that they would be attacked by Muslims in retaliation for attacks against them by local people in Assam.
India has so far issued instructions to block 245 URLs, including some on social networks, but inflammatory and harmful content continued to appear on their sites despite an advisory and request made by the government to remove such content, the government said.
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